The Paton-Churdan School District is entering the 2024-25 school year with a new leader at the helm.

Brian Johnson is the new shared superintendent with the Southeast Valley School District. His education career was influenced by his father, who was a high school principal. After Johnson graduated from Iowa State University in 1999 with a bachelor’s degree in elementary education, he was an elementary teacher for three years at Charter Oak-Ute, before moving to Maple Valley for three years where he taught multiple grade levels.

Johnson says he became the kindergarten through eighth grade building principal for Schleswig, and then following the retirement of the shared superintendent with the Denison School District, he was hired as the superintendent. Johnson explains what he learned as the shared superintendent, before he was hired in 2016 as the superintendent of what is now the Southeast Valley School District.

“I tell you what, I have a lot of networking friends and colleagues that I am able to network with and glean information from. So I was hopefully a little bit prepared for that.”

Johnson puts to rest right away if Paton-Churdan is going to consolidate with Southeast Valley.

“The answer to that is no. These are going to be two separate entities and we’re going to operate them as that. That being said, the folks that I have met at Paton-Churdan have just been outstanding. They’re just such kind people. I’m looking forward to learning from (Principal) Mrs. (Annie) Smith, and the teachers, and the culture and tradition down there on how Paton-Churdan does things. As we do up here at Southeast Valley, we will have conversations on how we might improve that process, if it needs to be improved.” 

Johnson took over as superintendent on July 1st, as he replaced Kreg Lensch who retired at the end of the 2023-24 school year.